by Brian Simons
Coral jumped up to her feet. That was exactly the level she was hoping to hit with her Skinweaving ability. Until now, she had been limited to Basic Skinweaving. At Skinweaving 8 she could spend skill points to unlock Standard Skinweaving. Anything she crafted after that might have special “transport” properties associated with it. She was eager to find out what those were.
When Coral tried to unlock Standard Skinweaving, she saw that it was still grayed out. No matter what she tried, she couldn’t select it or unlock it.
She was so focused on the semi-translucent message box in front of her that she didn’t notice Sal log in until she heard his voice.
“What took you so long?” Sybil asked.
“I had some banking to do,” he said.
“Problems with your rent again?” she asked.
“Yeah, mainly that it was a terrible waste of money.”
“Tell me about it,” Sybil said.
“I mean it. I cancelled the rent check before my landlord had a chance to deposit it. I donated it to Sagma instead.”
“You what?” Coral asked.
“It’s just so much more important to rebuild the temple.”
“Sal, what’s gotten into you?” Sybil asked.
“You guys have no faith,” he said and walked toward Daniel. Sybil and Coral shook their heads at each other. Neither found words to express the insanity of Sal donating real money to a fake online god.
“Let’s go,” Daniel said, motioning to the group that it was time to leave the desert behind.
It took a long time to make that a reality. The horizon offered no detail, just the flat, dry expanse of hot desert. As the sun rose higher overhead, Coral caught the smell of something stale. “What is that?” she asked, scrunching up her nose.
Sal looked over at her. “You didn’t hear me complain when you walked into Havenstock smelling like a fish market. Partly because it smells delicious.”
“Sorry, Sal, I didn’t realize that smell was you,” Coral said. Did she really smell like a fish market? Was she supposed to wash the sahuagin skins before she crafted with them?
“It’s ok,” Sal said. “I know the scent of ogre isn’t everyone’s favorite.”
>> Construction update: The restoration of Sagma’s tower is 21% complete. Donate gold to the god of wisdom through your status window to restore his temple to glory. Gold needed: 790,008,762.
“Do you guys see that?” Sal asked. “Other people are donating too!”
“Do you guys see this?” Chauncey said, “I’m dying of thirst.”
“We don’t have any water,” Coral said, “but I have these.” She pulled out a handful of skinned wyverns. “They look… moist.”
“Let’s eat!” Sal said, happily taking one of the proffered wyverns. He ate the entire snake in a few bites.
“They’re not even cooked,” Coral said.
“Think of it like sushi,” Sal said. Coral wanted to eat the wyvern. Sal had said it provided XP. She was just afraid the nanotech that kept this game so real would make her want to vomit the raw snake-steak back up.
“Here goes,” she said, and started chewing. The meat was tough, but chewable. It tasted salty and gamey, and not too terrible. When she swallowed her last bite, she saw:
>> You receive 1,000 XP.
“SAL,” she said. “You didn’t tell us how much XP each of these were worth.”
“Would it have mattered?” he asked. “Any XP is good XP.”
“We should have farmed more of them,” Sybil said.
“I tried,” Daniel said. “I couldn’t find any. They must have been hiding.”
“Sal,” Coral said, “what’s that icon floating above your head?” In the space normally reserved for buffs and debuffs, an image hovered above Sal. It was shaped like an “F” with an additional arm. A horizontal line at the top of the shape met a vertical line on the left hand side at a ninety degree angle, with a smaller horizontal line under the first, and another, even smaller line under that.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never seen this one before.”
The group trudged on under the desert sun, passing flat featureless terrain for hours. The fine sand underfoot gradually turned to a hard baked clay. The silhouette of patches of grass and small shrubs emerged in the distance. The air cooled gradually until the temperature was tolerable again. Then they crossed the threshold into the Dour Scrub, leaving the desert and its dangers behind.
The ground continued to change as they trekked, becoming a dry, dusty dirt, then becoming denser and richer as they progressed north. They still couldn’t see the forest in the distance, but with the shrubs and grasses getting denser, Coral started to believe they were getting closer. As they walked, they constantly waved their hands in front of their faces, trying in vain to disperse the clouds of gnats that seemed to get thicker the further they went.
Lyla led the group, making sharp turns every once in a while as if the random shrubs were street signs directing her to a precise address. After a while, Coral saw a few low domes built among the bushes. They were made of some kind of mud, with small entrances. They reminded her of shorter, wider igloos but made of dirt.
“Please wait here,” Lyla said before disappearing into one of the domes. Coral brushed gnats off of her face as they stood and waited. The small bugs were everywhere.
Lyla came back with another orc, this one much older. His long gray hair was a lighter shade than his smoky skin. He wore a long cape the color of hay, with ridges shaped like finger bones extending from the neck and fanning out toward the bottom of the cape. For all Coral knew, they really were finger bones.
“You must be Sage Natan,” Alua said. “It is an honor to meet you.”
“The honor is mine,” the Sage said in a soft, garbled voice. “To have a Knight of Havenstock and a Medium visit us is a needed reminder that the world has not forgotten the orcs. At least not entirely.”
The Sage turned his gaze toward Coral. “I understand that you know the ancient art of Skinweaving. How is that so?”
“I am a Seamstress,” she said, “and I learned this skill from someone else. At least, the Basic level of it. I haven’t been able to advance to Standard Skinweaving.”
“Who taught this to you?” the Sage asked.
“A man named Galbrag. He lives in the swamp.”
The Sage’s skin drained of color, turning a paler gray. “I see. The witch could teach you only what he knew. Did he tell you that Skinweaving is an orcish skill?”
“No,” Coral said.
“Of course not. No one credits the orcs for our gifts to the world. The Skinweaving skill is native to our Garmenter class.”
So Coral wouldn’t be able to unlock the next level of Skinweaving after all. The Sage must have picked up on her disappointment. “There is a way,” he said, “to share this skill with you. I have not had a student in some time. I could teach you to become a Garmenter. You must, however, contribute to our survival.”
“But I am not an orc,” Coral said. Could he really make her a Garmenter, or was this a trick?
“Orcs are marked by their patience and humility. We were once a great race, blessed with a large population of skilled magicians and tradespeople. We spoke a beautiful language, weaving our words into poems, literature, and tributes to our patron deity, Sagma. When Sagma waged a war against the gods he could not win, the rest of the world turned away from us. Not our intellect, nor our crafts, nor our very souls could undo the isolation forced on us by the rest of Travail.
“And so we dwindled. Our population grew small, scattered by in-fighting and scarce resources. We began to forget our skills, to lose our language. Now we live in small clans and fight with the land for what little sustenance we can. We have fallen far. Most orcs have given up hope that we could ever make a name for ourselves again.
“I, however, remember. I remember that what Sagma gave us he could take away. I remember that we cannot take his benediction for granted. From
the seeds of his blessing we must cultivate our own future.
“The orcs have faced many foes. We have one particularly fearsome enemy that now encroaches on our territory. Hunting this creature will take patience and humility, two characteristics orcs require to survive. If you, Coral_Daring, help us annihilate this threat, I will teach you our ancient trade. Then I hope you will tell others that the orcs still have something to share with the world.”
“We have to get to the forest,” Sybil said. “That’s the whole reason we’re here. We’re already on a quest, and this one might actually get us some gold — you know, the whole reason we labor away at this game day in day out? Seamstress works for you, just keep it. Besides, there’s nothing useful for the rest of us to do here in the Dour Scrub.”
“But Skinweaving is all I’ve done, besides a little bit of Leathermaking. I haven’t even unlocked the other branches of my Seamstress skill — robe armor, fancy gowns, bags and pouches — I’ve got to maximize my potential for the path I’m already on, right?”
“She has a point,” Daniel said, “and we’ll all need creative gear for what’s ahead of us. The elf queen will have enough tricks up her sleeve as it is.”
“You plan to challenge the elf queen?” The Sage’s eyes were wide with shock.
“The Regent of Havenstock sent us to investigate her army,” Daniel said. “If she attacks us, we’ll have no choice but to fight.”
“I’d like to prove myself, Sage Natan,” Coral said.
“Know this first,” he said. “The Garmenter class specializes only in clothing. You will lose access to any branches of the Seamstress skill tree unrelated to that. That means no inventory bags, no tapestries.”
“I understand,” she said.
New Quest: Fur Coax
Sage Natan needs you to outfox and remove a creature threatening the safety of the Dour Scrub.
Reward: Access to special orc skills.
“If I can prove myself,” Sybil said, “what then?”
“Shadowsiren,” the Sage said, “your words and your melody carry great power, but wars can turn on words alone. The orcish book of poems channels one’s soul through the rhythm of poems rather than songs.”
“Do I get to look through this book to decide whether I want it?”
“If you prove yourself first,” Sage Natan said.
“As delicious as raw wyverns are,” Sal said, “I should probably learn to cook them. I’ll experiment while you guys go on your quest.”
“Wyverns?” the Sage asked.
“Yes,” Lyla responded. “The desert has borne wyverns again, and likeworms. Sagma’s temple is being rebuilt. His rebirth seems to have brought the Sand Barrens back to life.”
“We’ll find something around here to kill for XP,” Daniel said and set off in another direction, waving for Lyla and Chauncey to follow him.
“Women,” the Sage said to Sybil and Coral, leading the way further into the Dour Scrub.
12
Daniel and his hirelings left Alua to sit by one of the orc dwellings and meditate in the open air.
“Some of these plants don’t look very healthy,” Daniel said, brushing a hand through a nearby bush. The green leaves were so dry they crackled against his gauntlet and fell in a green powder toward the ground.
“The land is dying.” Lyla said it so matter-of-factly Daniel was taken aback.
“How so?” he asked.
“The desert’s dryness is creeping north and killing off the plants here. The forest is full of diseased magic. The dwarven mountain is crumbling. I would wager that similar ills are happening elsewhere.”
Was that true? How hadn’t Daniel noticed any of that before?
“You’ll see when we get closer to the forest,” Lyla said. “We’ll never get inside it though.”
“Why not?”
“The orcs are sparse, and don’t all get along. We have a patrol sweep the area occasionally to make sure our little clan is safe. Lately, when our patrols swing further north, they’ve encountered deformed creatures.
“It used to be that the forest was dangerous because the elves guarded its boundaries. Now we have mutant beasts to worry about too. I’m not suited for melee battle. The forest terrifies me.”
“What do these mutant beasts look like?” Chauncey asked.
“There are all kinds,” Lyla said, “but they stay much further north, closer to the forest itself.”
“So that’s not a mutant beast?” he asked, pointing.
Daniel followed Chauncey’s finger to a shape in the distance. It was far enough away that Daniel had time to Surveil it.
>> You have Surveilled a Level 28 Mangled Dryant: 1430 HP (blighted).
“What is a dryant?” Daniel asked. “It looks like a mix between a tree and a woman.”
“I don’t know,” Lyla said. “There are treants in the forest, but none that look like people.”
The shambling shape came closer, its contorted figure struggling to walk with one human leg and one long splintered branch where a second leg would be. The creature had a woman’s head, but it was turned to one side and engulfed in a hollowed tree trunk. She peered forward with one eye.
“Wait here,” Daniel said. He activated his Sneak skill and crept toward the creature. His stamina drained gradually as he tiptoed through the brush, careful to walk in long slow strides to prevent his iron armor from jostling and creaking. He was starting to see why Rogues didn’t wear solid suits of metal.
As he closed the space between himself and the misshapen creature, he saw the anguish on the female face trapped within the tree bark. So far the monstrosity hadn’t noticed him. The mutant plant swung large branches from side to side as it wobbled forward on its one human leg. If Daniel wanted to Backstab this thing, this was as close as he could creep. He’d need to lunge at the mob when its massive branch-arms swung at the right time to give him an opening.
Daniel readied his blade. When the time was right, he ran, lifting his sword overhead and bringing it crashing down on the dryant’s trunk from behind.
>> Backstab failed. 2 Damage.
>> Debuff added: Dishonor. Knights do not tiptoe toward danger, they charge at it head-on.
That was bad news. With a Dishonor debuff, his Gallantry skill would stay inactive, depriving him, Lyla, and Chauncey of some valuable combat bonuses. He wished his Backstab had at least been successful before the debuff showed up. Why was he so bad at Backstabbing?
To make matters worse, the dryant spun around and saw him. It was enraged. It swung a dense arm toward Daniel and knocked him onto his back.
>> You’ve been hit! 120 Damage.
Daniel swung his sword up and used Sword of Ploughshares. The woman’s face above him soothed into a calm expression. She was Pacified. Then a large wooden branch came crashing down on Daniel’s torso.
>> You’ve been hit! 235 Damage.
Pacifying the woman did nothing to calm the treant component of this monstrous duo. Daniel rolled to the side to avoid another blow and then stood up to face the creature with his sword. It whacked a branch at him, but he Parried and blocked it.
“Lyla!” Daniel yelled as his hirelings caught up to him. “Can you shield me?”
“Without a deity to learn prayers from, all I can do is heal,” she said, pointing her scimitar at Daniel and conjuring a cooling green light that fed back some of his lost HP. “I’m sorry.”
“Chauncey,” Daniel said, “attack from the other side. Let’s divide its attention.” Chauncey ran around to the other side of the dryant and swung his sword at the monster. Daniel managed to chop part of a branch off completely.
>> Mangled Dryant takes 367 Damage. [Disarmed].
The rest of that branch fell limp at its side, but there were three others to contend with. Then the ground began to rumble. The phrase Root of Evil appeared above its head and large brown tendrils sprouted from the ground. One shot up under Lyla, knocking her down. Two others wrapped around Chauncey and pin
ned him to the earth. It looked like they were pressing down, squeezing him against the ground. Daniel hoped Chauncey’s armor would hold up.
Daniel swung his sword again at the tree, trying not to slice into the exposed flesh of the woman trapped inside. He still didn’t know if she was being held captive or if she was just as evil as the rest of this creature.
>> Mangled Dryant takes 419 Damage.
The look of torment returned to her face. The Pacify debuff was wearing off.